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To workers hit by factory closures, ‘this NAFTA thing was a disaster’

Blade (Toledo, OH)

Oct. 09--First of two parts

Abelino Ruiz yawned, stretched, and apologized for his fatigue, blaming it on the night shift he just finished as a Toledo Hospital nursing assistant.

It's a job the 53-year-old from West Toledo is grateful for and one he reinvented himself to do after a decade working inside a factory that was shuttered and since razed -- another casualty of a plummeting economy and possibly a continental trade deal that helped ship jobs to other countries.

"I worked at Textileather from 1991 to, man, almost 11 years, and I was out of there in 2001 or 2002 when they started cutting down supervision," Mr. Ruiz said.

Like many laid-off factory workers, he faced losing his home, and it took years for recovery. Mr. Ruiz said he finally feels, a decade later, like he is financially secure.

"I ended up working three jobs right after," he said. "When a lot of people in the automotive industry lost their good paying jobs, that's what they were doing to survive."

With Republican candidate Donald Trump harping on Hillary Clinton regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which was negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and championed through Congress by President Bill Clinton -- the 2016 campaign has reignited debate on the trade deal blamed for thousands of lost Ohio jobs.

For Mr. Ruiz, there is no debate. It's right there in writing. The reason Textileather closed, as determined by the U.S. Department of Labor for its Trade Adjustment Assistance program, was a shift in production to China and Canada.

"Yeah, NAFTA," Mr. Ruiz acknowledged. "Plus we watched our benefits get slowly get taken away -- medical, vision, dental -- we had it all. We had Christmas parties, picnics, and it made you feel like family."

Ohio factories gone

You don't have to go far to find blue collar workers who point directly at NAFTA as the driving force behind the decline of U.S. manufacturing.

"You talk to people from Honeywell at least and they'll say Clinton was a pretty good president overall, but this NAFTA thing was a disaster," said David Heiser, a 65-year-old electrician who retired from Honeywell International'sAutolite spark plug factory in Fostoria shortly before the company shipped more than 500 jobs to Mexico.

Northwest Ohio is scattered with towns like Fostoria that were once best known for making things. Now many of those factory towns are known for trying to reinvent themselves in the 21st century economy.

"I think that plays in Bernie Sanders' appeal," Mr. Heiser said. "I think that even plays in with Trump, talking about the trade deal. People are personally affected by it. They definitely bring that up. It's like Perot's statement you're going to hear a big sucking sound from the south and that's going to be the jobs leaving here and going to Mexico."

Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman and anti-NAFTA crusader, is perhaps best known today for that famous remark about the "giant sucking sound" of jobs heading to cheap labor in Mexico if the trade deal passed Congress.

For NAFTA's local critics, one of the most egregious examples is what happened to employees of art and writing supply maker Dixon Ticonderoga in Sandusky. Not only were workers of the 167-year-old factory losing their jobs, they had to train the workers from Mexico who were set to replace them.

"It didn't go over well, but we're kind of limited in what we can do," union president Roger Bibler told The Blade in 2002. "We're at [the company's] mercy."

Mr. Bibler couldn't be reached for this story. More than 100 men and women lost their jobs, which paid between $12 and $15 per hour. The plant in Sandusky has since been torn down.

Debating the effect

President Clinton delivered an impassioned speech Dec. 8, 1993, as he signed NAFTA into law following simmering debate in Congress.

"NAFTA will tear down trade barriers between our three nations," Mr. Clinton said referencing the United States, Canada, and Mexico. "It will create the world's largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone."

More than two decades later, NAFTA's impact on the Midwest is still hotly debated by workers, economists, and politicians.

"NAFTA promised to create jobs, which obviously didn't happen. It promised to expand American exports, but we have always had a trade deficit with Mexico, getting bigger every year," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), one of the loudest voices in Congress about the devastation caused by NAFTA and other trade deals. "There hasn't been a trade deal that has helped American business or workers in three decades."

Some people who lost their jobs at Honeywell, or InterMetro, or Dixon Ticonderoga ended up being OK. For example, Mr. Heiser and his son Nate -- who also worked at Honeywell -- opened a restaurant together five years ago. Today they employ 30 to 35 people. But a lot of former Ohio factory workers aren't.

"There's still people that I know of that are bouncing around, different jobs here and there trying to do the best they can because they didn't want to leave the area," Mr. Heiser said.

It's indisputable Ohio and Michigan have lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the past two decades. State data shows one-third of Ohio's manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 2000. Michigan has lost 31 percent.

In metro Toledo alone, some 5,500 jobs have been lost to foreign countries. At least 4,350 have gone to Mexico and another 900 have relocated to Canada. Barbados, China, Costa Rica, France, and Poland have also gained jobs from Toledo.

You'll find plenty of debate over how much NAFTA is to blame for that.

Ned Hill, professor of public affairs and city and regional planning at Ohio State'sJohn Glenn College of Public Affairs, argues the narrative that NAFTA destroyed American manufacturing is one of the most wrongly perpetuated stories of all time.

"Plants in Toledo were old and outdated," Mr. Hill said. "The companies weren't inventing new products and they were the highest-cost plants to operate. When demand for the products quieted down, the highest-cost, lowest-efficient plants were shut down."

And Eric Burkland, president of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association, argues NAFTA has been a net benefit to Ohio. He notes the state sent $20 billion worth of products to Canada and $11 billion worth of products to Mexico last year alone.

"Those exports support high-paying Ohio manufacturing jobs," he said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also argues that increased trade has been a boon to the United States. A recent report from the group found trade with Canada and Mexico nearly quadrupled to $1.3 trillion during the first two decades of NAFTA and that it supports nearly 14 million U.S. jobs, with 5 million of those attributed directly to NAFTA.

Meanwhile, a 2015 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that NAFTA had a modest effect on the U.S. economy, saying it did not cause huge job losses critics predicted or large economic gains championed by supporters.

But no matter which expert's analysts you prescribe to, it's unquestionable that trade has taken center stage in the presidential election.

"[NAFTA] has been a total unmitigated disaster," Mr. Trump has said repeatedly at packed campaign rallies to huge cheers. "Has anyone seen what's going on in Mexico? They're taking our businesses, they're taking our plants. What a sad state of affairs. Well, NAFTA made that all possible and it was signed by her husband."

The Republican nominee said he will renegotiate NAFTA or possibly ignore it.

For her part, Mrs. Clinton has said past trade deals "have been sold to the American people with rosy scenarios that did not pan out."

She's pledged to stop any trade deal that kills or holds down wages and to invest in and support union training programs.

That's little comfort, though, for those who have already been through the wringer and feel they're too close to the ends of their working careers to start over.

Finding new jobs

Sue Utrup felt that way. She spent 30 years working at the Philips Display Components in Ottawa before it closed in 2002.

"You could go to school, but it was only for what was in your area. Truck driving and nursing, well I'm already in my middle 50s. I don't want either one, I'm not doing it," she said. "It's hard. It's hard to start over. They can't discriminate by your age, but they do."

She did find work, but the recession that began in 2008 forced that company to downsize and she was laid off with no recall rights.

"Now I'm quite a bit older," Ms. Utrup said while meeting with a number of other former Philips workers at local restaurant. "Now where do you go?"

The closure of the Philips factory hit Ottawa, which is in Putnam County about 60 miles southwest of Toledo, especially hard. The picture tube plant once had more than 2,300 jobs -- a huge factory in a town of just 4,500 people -- but to the global economy, its costs were too high.

"The plant is marginally profitable, but does not meet Philips' corporate expectations for returns to shareholders," the company said in a 1997 statement to The Blade.

Three years later the company announced plans to shift nearly all its production to Mexico. Nearly 1,200 people lost their jobs. Whole families lost their jobs.

At one point, Mary Jane Lambert's family had nine people employed there. Of her seven siblings and parents, only Ms. Lambert's father didn't draw his paycheck from Philips. She herself spent more than 37 years there.

Even worse, beyond losing their jobs, most of the Philips employees lost their health care benefits, benefits they thought they had for life. Many weren't able to find insurance to replace what they lost.

"It was over $800 a month, so I don't have it," Ms. Utrup said. "I have catastrophic insurance in case I get cancer or something, but other than that, no. I can't afford it."

She and Ms. Lambert were part of a class-action lawsuit that sought to bring those benefits back, but ultimately the case was dismissed.

Ms. Lambert did find another job, though her run of bad luck wasn't nearly over. In 2007, Ottawa got nine inches of rain in one day. The Blanchard River exploded over its banks. Ms. Lambert's home had seven feet of water in it.

"I lost everything. The only thing I saved was my car, a pair of sandals, and my sweatshirt," she said.

Then came another call. After 37 years of steady work at Phillips, she was being laid off from her new job shortly after she was hired.

She ended up being treated for depression.

"I didn't know what depression was but good Lord, you lose everything you own and then the next week they tell you the job is gone because the warehouse was over budget," she said.

Today, she works seven days a week delivering The Lima News and working as a security guard. She couldn't even get a day off for her wedding.

"You do what you've gotta do," she said, thanking her mom and dad for giving her such a strong work ethic.

But even a strong work ethic can't find everyone jobs.

"Some of them work at McDonald's. They get $8 an hour, but that's better than nothing. Quite a few of them work at Walmart," she said. "Some of them never found a job. When I see somebody that worked there, I'll say to them 'Did you find a job, are you still working?' I feel bad."